Man Of War

Pirates: the very devil, the whole of the Barbary coast and beyond – Peto had given many of them a watery grave and had hanged almost as many more when he had been commodore of the frigate squadron; when, indeed, he had gone into their very nests with the Americans (fine fellows, Americans; he was glad he had never used powder against them in the late war). They would be plying in and out of Algiers no doubt, exactly as before. When the Turks were sent back to Constantinople he expected Codrington would turn his attention to them. Not that that would be a job for a three-decker; they might stand in at Malta for a week or so until their lordships recalled Rupert to home waters – back to being a guardship, with a skeleton crew and long days ashore. Or even back into the Ordinary, dismasted and ungunned. But why worry himself about that now? Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof.

There would be evil today right enough: it was not possible to inspect a King’s ship, no matter how diligent its lieutenant, without finding something amiss. All he could hope for when he made his first rounds was that the faults could be righted by sweat rather than blood, and from within the ship’s own resources. His old friend the commissioner at Gibraltar had told him he believed Rupert to be well found, but he would only know for certain when he had seen for himself.

At eight o’clock Peto came on to the quarterdeck. For three hours the idlers and larboard watch had been holystoning the decks and swilling the dirty sand into the waterways and scuppers. The swabbers had flogged the decks until they were dry, and the trusted hands had brightened the brasswork about the rails and bitts. And when the sanding, holystoning, swabbing and polishing was done, other hands had flemished down the ropes and stowed the washdeck gear, so that by seven o’clock the work had been practically finished. When Lieutenant Lambe came back on deck after his morning shave he had professed himself pleased with things – as well he might, for this was but the day’s routine (every day barring Sunday), although the boatswain’s mates had known full well that a keener eye would be cast on their charges on this morning. At half past he had sent the mates below to pipe ‘All hands. Up hammocks’, and the entire crew – sleepers as well as watch – had scurried with their lashed-up bedding to the upper-deck nettings, where the quartermasters and midshipmen supervised the stowing, after which Lambe had been able to dismiss them to breakfast.

‘Good morning, sir,’ he said brightly, touching his hat. ‘Seven knots at present, five in the night.’

Peto nodded. It was a morning exactly as the evening’s red light had promised – the shepherd’s delight, but the sailor’s even more so. He loved Norfolk as loyally as any man (his father, and his father before him, had been born next-the-sea) but the fairest day in Nelson’s county could not compare with such a morning at sea, the sun on his face, the wind filling the sail, and the air as pure as the water of the Arethusa spring. He glanced at the rate-of-sailing board: a following wind and twenty miles during the middle watch (the calculation was simple enough). ‘Thank you, Mr Lambe. Have the master set royals and t’gallants when I am finished my inspection, if the wind does not freshen by much. We ought to be making nine knots while the sea is favourable.’

‘Ay-ay, sir.’

‘Have you had your breakfast?’

‘I have, sir.’

‘Do you have any objection to a little more?’

Lambe looked faintly bemused. ‘By no means, sir.’

Peto turned to his steward, who had come on deck with a coffee pot and cups. ‘Would you bring us a plate apiece of the ship’s burgoo?’

Flowerdew poured them coffee and then shuffled off in the stooping gait he adopted when asked to do something he found contrary to his own ideas of what was proper (or expedient).

‘Is that Mr Pelham I observe on the poop?’

‘It is, sir. He stood the middle watch, and came back on deck as soon as it was light enough to signal to Archer.’

‘Call him, if you will.’

Lambe beckoned the midshipman, who sped down the companion ladder as if the drummer were beating to quarters.

‘Sir!’ he squeaked, a discernibly new telescope peeping from beneath his cloak.

Peto returned the salute. ‘Mr Lambe informs me that you sustained an injury yesterday. Have you yet reported to the surgeon?’

‘No, sir.’

‘Why not?’

‘I did not consider it serious enough, sir.’

‘Indeed? Have you some medical qualification?’

‘No, sir.’

‘Then kindly give yourself the benefit of the surgeon’s, else how am I to rely upon what you see through that telescope of yours . . . It is a new telescope, is it not?’

‘It is, sir. I bought it of Mr Adams.’